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Tsipras in solidarity visit to Vio.Me, 2013. Demotix/Dimitris Chantzaras. All rights reserved.There is nothing to
celebrate, really, after Sunday’s elections in Greece. The European leftists
that arrived in Athens to support Tsipras are understandably celebrating, since
they have a vision of Syriza that is external and more often than not
romanticized. As far as Greeks are concerned, no one can doubt that there are
honest and well-meaning left-wing people who have voted for Syriza or are even
(still) members of Syriza. But after the developments of the last few months
the last thing they want to do is celebrate.

Why would they
celebrate, when tomorrow the new Syriza-led government has to enforce and
oversee the implementation of a harsh attack on nature and the popular classes,
having given up its capacity to legislate without the tutelage of Brussels and
Berlin, and being under constant financial blackmail by the creditors.

Tsipras' new ‘selling
point’ is his fight against corruption and the oligarchy, since his
newly-adopted ‘pragmatism’ dictates that he cannot any more fight against
austerity and neoliberal restructuring. Thus, the horizon of left-wing politics
in Greece has become an ‘austerity with a human face’, a ‘less corrupt’ and
‘more just’ enforcement of neoliberal barbarity.

Unfortunately, in the
coming months we are going to witness Tsipras' ‘political maturity’ and
‘pragmatism’ extending to ever new areas. Pragmatism dictates that you cannot
fight against those who own all the wealth and the mass media in Greece; that
you cannot shut
down the Canadian-interest gold mine in Skouries, Halkidiki; that, despite the anti-privatization
rhetoric, you have to privatize the water companies after all; that you cannot
permit worker occupations like VIOME to
challenge private property.

In short, left-wing
pragmatism is going to achieve everything that right-wing arrogance could not,
that is, to subdue a population that has been fighting against neoliberal
barbarity for five years. Although the European left is prone to argue that the
breach is still open and the war is far from over, a closer examination offers
no evidence that anything –apart from the government’s rhetoric – has changed
or is about to change in battlefield Greece.

Indeed, the social
movements have been tricked into standing by and waiting for Syriza to deliver
on its promises. The government is gaining political time, while movement
demobilization means that struggles are defeated one by one: the self-managed workers
of public broadcaster ERT are banished by the new management, the anti-mining
movement in Halkidiki sees the destruction of its land... Who is next? Maybe self-managed
VIOME, struggling to legitimize its activity in adverse conditions? Maybe
Thessaloniki's water movement, which fiercely fought and stopped privatization,
only to see it back on the table according to the terms of the new memorandum?
After five years of constant strife, popular resistance only seems to grow
thinner, while the forces of capital appear very resourceful in pushing through
their policies of dispossession – this time around under the guise of a
progressive government.

Likewise, the failure
of SYRIZA’s splinter ‘Popular Unity’ to mobilize voters comes as no surprise:
despite the anti-memorandum rhetoric, the new party repeated some of the more
objectionable practices of SYRIZA. It was constituted in a top-down process,
solely on party cadres and without connection to grassroots militants, built
around flamboyant and self-centred personalities, projecting a hegemonism
towards movements and other political forces, seeking followers rather than
allies, projecting its state-centric programme of national capitalist
reconstruction outside the euro as the holy grail of transformatory politics.

It failed to mobilise
ex-SYRIZA voters, most of whom preferred to stay at home rather than vote for
Popular Unity; it also failed to convince the disenchanted movement-friendly
party base of SYRIZA, which to this moment remains politically homeless. It
thus allowed Tsipras to purge SYRIZA of its left wing, conclude the
transformation of the party into a centrist force and emerge as the overall winner
of the electoral game.

Someone could argue
that Syriza retaining its electoral percentage on Sunday's elections is a sign
that the bulk of the population consents to the party's ‘pragmatism’. Two
points should be stressed here:

Firstly, it is a
perfectly respectable stance to vote for Syriza as the lesser neoliberal evil.
Voting by definition involves complex calculations, political blackmail and a
host of ethical dilemmas that the Greeks have faced three times in less than
eight months. Those who abstain for political reasons cannot have a claim on
moral superiority in this fluid and complex political situation. But let's not
assume either that all the people who cast an instrumental vote for Syriza are
going to stand by with their arms crossed when the government begins its raid
against people and nature in the next few months.

Secondly, and most
importantly, while the political system is designed to maintain appearances and
guarantee the continuity of power, no one can deny that the most important
aspect of Sunday's elections was the abstention skyrocketing to 45% from 36% in
January and from 29% in 2009. It is easy to calculate that in a country of 10
million registered voters, this translates to over 4 million people who do not
vote, or about 1 and a half million people who have lost their faith in the
political system since the start of the crisis. This last figure represents about
as many people as those who vote for either of the two major political parties.

We shouldn’t hasten to
claim all these people for the forces of social emancipation and
self-determination, as some anarchists would have it. A wide range of motives
and circumstances have led to this disenchantment, which could include
depression, apathy, individualism and resignation. Nevertheless, a critical
mass of people doesn’t vote because it has a conception of politics as an
embodied collective process, not as a ritual stuffing of the ballot box.

While the political
system could not care less about this huge mass of disenchanted citizens – as
long as they stay at home and they do not vote for protest parties that could
cause disruption, it is all the same to them - the ones that should be really
concerned about them should be the social movements, as well as the ideological
currents that feel closer to the grassroots, namely the libertarian movement
and the extra-parliamentary left.

How can we break
through the wall of apathy and resignation, connect with the desires and
aspirations of the disenchanted population, cultivate collective spirit, social
organization and creativity, desire for change and emancipation? After all,
that was SYRIZA’s appeal – that it broke free from the leftist ‘niche’ and
directly addressed society. What can we learn from the ordeal of both SYRIZA
and the social movements about our practices, communication strategies and
means of action with respect to social change?

Unfortunately large chunks
of the libertarian and leftist movements are more concerned about preserving
their own identity than connecting with the disenchanted classes. We circulate
our indecipherable manifests, largely for internal consumption; we cling to our
ideological purity and our maximalist rhetoric; we shout out our angry slogans
and cradle our flags; we boast when we have a handful of protesters more in our
marches or when our parties get a few thousand votes more in the elections.

All the while, millions
of people out there are hungry for social change, but are probably resigned to
an individualistic existence, and we have no means of getting through to them.

While many would
interpret 45% abstention as a healthy rejection of the pointless simulacrum of
representative democracy, it can as well be interpreted as a failure, or rather
as a chain of failures: the failure of a social order to incorporate large
chunks of the population in the mainstream of social life; the failure of a
political system to offer credible avenues of changing said social order; the
failure of the social movements and the left to create a new imaginary of
transformation of this political system.

The politics of “there
is no alternative” promoted by our left-wing government are sure to heighten
resignation and apathy. Nevertheless, a society under extreme pressure for so
many years is definitely bound to explode sooner or later. The social movements
in Greece have produced admirable responses towards self-emancipation in the
last few years, but they have failed to articulate these responses into a
coherent voice, a proposal for overcoming the present political and economic
order. They have idealised partiality and fragmentation, they have not
addressed the issue of political organization, and have thus been absorbed or
marginalised by the hegemonic project of SYRIZA.

The pyrrhic victory of
the left in last Sunday’s elections should initiate a process of critical
self-reflection, both in Greece and throughout Europe. We have ahead of us
difficult moments of dispossession and resistance, and the social movements,
however small and insignificant, constitute at present the only remaining
antagonistic force against capitalist barbarity.

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